Dennis Tuuri

Then shall I delight myself in the Lord, and I will cause you to light upon the high places of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we thank you for calling us in the convocation the Sabbath day to rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ and indeed to rejoice in his finished work as our covenant mediator. We acknowledge before you, Lord God, that we come before you as sinners having no internal intrinsic righteousness in ourselves, but the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to our account on the basis of his work and his resurrection and you enlivening faith in us to believe in him.

We thank you Lord God that we have therefore peace with you and we can come before you this day to sing praises to you with open ears to hear your word and to leave this day with open hands to do your work. We thank you for the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We rejoice in it and in its assured expansion throughout the created order. And we pray Lord that this day we would worship you for that kingdom that we would ensure our place in that kingdom as we move in obedience to your scriptures that we receive instruction this morning from our king of kings and lord of lords Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the name of the Lord. Praise him oh ye servants of the Lord. Ye that stand in the house of the Lord in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord for the Lord is good. Sing praise under his name for it is pleasant. Please be seated.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And he shall be like the tree planted by the rivers of water. His leaf also shall not wither. The ungodly are not so. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous.

Sermon scripture is Leviticus 18:21. Leviticus the 18th chapter verse 21. And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech. Neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. I am the Lord.

The younger children may be dismissed now to go to their Sabbath schools.

We continue this morning with a series of messages we’ve been going on for quite some time now, going through our church’s confessional statement and covenant document. We are near the end of that statement. We’re at that portion where the person that covenants into membership at Reformation Covenant Church covenants to raise his children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

We will spend this Sunday and one more Sunday, two weeks from today on that particular topic and then move on the following Sunday, the first Sunday in August to consideration of the Sabbath, which is the last statement in our covenant document.

Last week we had the third in this series of talks on the education of children, the nurturing of them. We began a two-part talk then on Molech worship, and we’ll continue with that this morning, although the outline has been substantially changed from what I passed on last week. Remember, last week I taught the first point of a four-part outline. The other points have been changed this week. My wife tells you that outlines are supposed to read like sentences as you go through. And so I got around that difficulty this morning by making the three central points of the talk, points two through four, the same sentence, all three of them. You’ll notice, however, that there are different words underlined in those three points.

We’ll begin this morning by reviewing what we talked about last week, and we’ll move on to Molech worship. Passing the seed to Molech. Talk about the implications of what does that mean? Passing one’s children through the fire to Molech. Next, we’ll talk about Molech worship as passing the seed to Molech. And we’ll emphasize there the word the seed. What is it that we’re not to pass to Molech? And then we’ll conclude with a brief discussion since we spent all of last week on this discussing what Molech was, what the implications of that worship are. And then talk about some applications for today.

There are several reasons for going through a study of Molech worship. And I mentioned so last week the fact that people that we read and respect have addressed the idea that public education is Molech worship in our society today others including James B. Jordan have said well that isn’t quite true that’s misleading to argue from that analogy and we’ll address one of the statements from Mr. Jordan’s short article on this as we get into the middle of the talk this morning. That’s one reason.

A bigger reason though is that the scriptures tell us positively as we began this series with the great Shema, or Hear, O Israel educate your children in the faith. To hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might, with all thy mind. And then you’re to teach these things unto your children, everything that’s commanded of us.

And we talked about the necessity then of education of children in terms of covenant participation. Participation of the covenant of grace implies that a person who is saved by God will move on to instruct his children in the faith. You have a positive commandment then that we’re to rear our children in the admonition and nurture the Lord.

Negatively though Molech worship is a specific prohibition about an activity involving our children and it’s a prohibition that’s repeated in Leviticus 18:21 and then Leviticus 20 the first five verses. So God doesn’t repeat himself for no reason. It’s an important thing for us to recognize that it’s a danger to us. And we talked last week about the history of Israel, God’s covenant dealings with the nation of Israel in the land of Canaan.

And we saw as they were continually plagued by the Ammonites who were specifically the people that worship Molech and they themselves continually fell in and lapsed into the worship of Molech. So, it’s important for us not to allow ourselves to fall into that same error and same sin. It’s important to recognize too, as we talked about last week, we’ll talk about it more this week. There’s severe restrictions upon Molech worship.

The person that offers his son or is given to Molech is to be stoned to death, which is an indication of, of course, expulsion from the covenant community that the civil magistrate an ideal situation would be not allowing such public worship of the idol Molech. So it’s an important thing for us to consider for both several of those reasons that I’ve mentioned.

Well, last week we began with a historical overview of the Ammonites. The scriptures tell us very clearly in 1 Kings 11:7 that Molech was the god of the Ammonites. And so we had to understand the Ammonites to understand Molech worship. We began with the history of Ammon himself, of course, who was a product of the incestuous relationship of Lot with his daughters. We went on to look at the prohibition of Ammonites from the congregation of the Lord because when the people of Israel were brought out of Egypt going into the promised land, they were given specific directions by God to avoid the Ammonites.

They would not make war with them because they were related as it were through Lot. And yet the Ammonites having been given a degree of grace by God in that respect rejected God’s grace and instead hired with the Moabites Balaam to curse the people of Israel. And so God then demanded they be excluded from the congregation of Israel for 10 generations.

Both those instances in Ammon and then in the entrance of the people into the land, Ammonites were those people that rejected the grace of God. After all, Lot was given a degree of grace by getting the instructions to leave Sodom and Gomorrah before it was destroyed. That grace was then perverted by his daughters who had this incestuous relationship. The grace of God shown to the Ammonites when the Israelites moved into the promised land was also denied by them and instead they moved further and further away from God.

We talked about just then, the time of the Israelites there. The important thing we wanted to remember about that was that the tyranny of Molech, the tyranny of the Ammonites over the nation of Israel was preceded by the worship of the God of the Ammonites, Molech. And that’s important for us to recognize in this country, if we have tyranny today, it’s because we’ve worshiped false gods.

He talked about the time of Saul in a very important verse. We’ll go back to this verse later in this talk this morning, dealing with Nahash, the king of the Ammonites. Nahash means serpent. Nahash was the serpent king of the Ammonites. He was as it were a Molech since the Ammonites worshiped the king, the civil state. Nahash was the head of that civil state. And the Israelites again fell into the worship of the civil state. When they rejected God as king over them, it said instead and specifically in relationship to Nahash, “Now we want a king like the nations around us. We don’t want God as our king.”

They also had rejected the grace of God because remember God had given them many victories over pagan kings around them. Remember when God had gone into captivity for his people in the form of the ark that he had been brought into the temple of Dagon and won that battle as it were single-handedly without any human intervention at all and the Philistines gave back the ark to the Israelites. You remember that the conclusion of his encounter with the god of Dagon, Dagon lay as it were with his head severed.

This stone god that was made lay with his head severed by the ark as it were. When the ark left the place he had fallen down. His head had broken off and picturing the fatal head wound to be given eventually to Satan himself by our Lord Jesus Christ. But Israel rejected then the grace of God and the victories that he gave them and then really wanted a king among the nations that king like the Ammonites had. And so they rejected God as king.

God still though didn’t give them a king like the Gentiles around him. He gave them first a godly king, King Saul. But Saul also then became a Molech exchanging the worship of God as it were for his own will and for the will of the creature denying the creator-creature distinction. Saul also rejected God’s grace and Saul’s end was like the end of Dagon. When Saul was finally killed himself in battle, Philistines cut off his head, took that head back to the temple of Dagon and put it before Dagon.

Poetic justice as it were and God’s justice and judgment inflamed upon Saul, saying Saul had become another Dagon or another Molech. David successfully battled the Ammonites and we talked about the verse last where it says that David that put the Ammonites after he conquered them under the sword made him pressed with brick kilns and under the saws in spite of what other commentators may say I believe that is a picture of hell that the cutting apart of the sacrifice of people that reject the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and then them passing through the fire that verse is preceded by the way with saying that David took the crown off of the king of the Ammonites many people many commentators believe it means he took the crown off this the statue of Molech itself although it does say that David put that crown upon himself.

Apparently weighed about 65 lbs. But again, we see there the settling as it were of the head or the crown from the Ammonite God by a picture of Jesus Christ, the covenant mediator revealed through one of the Old Testament stories that of David.

But then David’s son Solomon, we talked about him and how he had again rejected and introduced again the love and practice of Molech worship. Didn’t say he engaged in Molech worship, but he built an idol to Molech. He built a place for him to be worshiped. And we talked then about the fact that Solomon’s son Rehoboam again specifically because Solomon had rejected the true worship of God and had turned to the worship of Molech and other gods. God said his kingdom will be taken from him except for one tribe.

Solomon’s son became another form as it were of Molech saying if you think Solomon is a hard taskmaster I am twice as hard and rejected the counsel of the older men in his community and took the counsel of the young men and became as it were another Molech after his father had introduced the worship back into Israel.

Jehoshaphat. We talked about Jehoshaphat’s victory over the Ammonites. The important thing there he remembered was that God himself won that victory again and that worship, the singing of the people and the praise that accompanied the defeat of the Ammonites by God. We said there that worship then is essential to victory as we look for victory over pagan doctrines and pagan gods.

We talked about King Josiah and about Nehemiah. He said that the destruction of Molech worship and that’s one thing that Josiah did specifically was he desecrated where Molech had been worshiped. We see that the defeat of state worship is absolutely essential to the task of Christian reconstruction and it was in the time of Nehemiah as well to avoid the Ammonites and the worship of their god.

So we talked about Molech worship in man history as a rejection on the part of Molech worshipers of God and his grace, the rejection of God as their king and turning instead to another king to Molech, the civil the civil state deified in its head of state.

Today we want to talk about we want to proceed then away from the historical aspect to a certain degree and go to the case law itself to the laws in Leviticus 18 and 20 that specifically prohibit Molech worship and talk about some implications of those texts before us. What did it mean to pass the seed through to Molech?

Jim Jordan in saying that it is not proper to reason from Molech worship to public education one of the reasons and we read this before I believe was this. He said “Second offering children to Molech meant killing them and offering their blood in a religious rite of worship to an idol. Christians who send their children to public school are engaging in an action which is considerably less serious, though still very serious.”

Well, if he’s correct, of course, if Molech worship meant and only meant the killing of children, the passing through of their blood and fire and the burning of the children up in worship, then you could his point would be valid. But is it correct? Let’s look at the text and find out.

Now we know that some aspect of Molech worship did in fact involve the burning of children. Specifically in Jeremiah 7:31 we read there that they built the high places of Topheth which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire which I commanded them not neither came into my heart. So God says simply that the people of Israel did at some point in time actually burn their children in the fire.

And there are historical accounts of the fact some people believe that Molech was a large bronze statue that was hollow. A fire would be heated in front of this big pit either under it or right in front of it. And this bronze statue would have these arms out like this and the head of I think a ox or a lamb. I’m not sure. This thing would be superheated by this fire would be hollow. The children then, depending on which story you listen to, would either be killed or they put be placed alive onto these bronze arms of Molech which are incredibly hot which would eventually kill the child.

It said that the priests, I remember we’re talking about the covenant people of Israel here. It said that the priests during those particular services would beat drums and sing so that the people couldn’t hear the screams of the children. Certainly in the Bible practice and certainly it has happened historically in the covenant people where they actually did burn their children.

Now remember there that the place say we talked about this a little bit last week the place specifically where this took place was Topheth in the valley of the sons of Hinnom. And that’s important for us too because said before the Topheth comes from the word that meant a smiting and the vowel points of the word shame were put into that word to make it Topheth so there’s a connotation the saying that king worship is shameful to have become a place of smite and of shame this is a common device really in Hebrew language it may not seem so to us.

Another example of that according to some commentators is the word Ashtaroth. It believes that the name Astarte that goddess had those same vowel points put in made it Ashtaroth basing the shame idea with that false goddess. Ishbaal is also called in the scriptures Ishbosheth and the word Baal there is converted into shame. Same thing is true of Merib-baal or Mephibosheth. So it’s important for us to recognize this is a place of tremendous shame.

So the very name itself in holy scripture is associated with shame and a great contempt by God for what was occurring there. It’s also good for us to remember that this was in the valley of the sons of Hinnom. You certainly have heard of the word Gehenna. Well Gehenna comes from this word Hinnom. The valley of the sons of Hinnom. Gehenna. Gay Hinnom. The valley of the sons of Hinnom. And so Gehenna itself which came to be a word to conjure up images of hell with the covenant people including in the New Testament was based upon this Valley of Hinnom.

There was a continual burning going on there. Apparently, as we said, Josiah when he desecrated, some people believe he made into a big garbage heap. It certainly became that by the time of our Lord. There’s just continual burning going on. Trash piled into it. And you have this sight of Gehenna or hell.

Well, again, this pictures to us the awfulness of Molech worship. And as we said, the scriptures do say that historically the people of Israel did immolate some of their children in the fire. But is that what’s prohibited when it’s law. Certainly, that’s prohibited. But is that all that’s prohibited? I don’t think so.

Specifically in Leviticus 18:21, we read a couple of minutes ago, you notice it says there, “Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech.” And for those of you who have Bibles that indicate where there’s been an inclusion by the interpreter or the translator, you notice the words the fire is included there by the translator. The only word put in there is this path. Okay, the word fire is not in the Hebrew text. It’s assumed on the basis of passing something to Molech. But that’s an assumption that is not in holy scripture.

Now, the word pass is used in a more generalized sense in other places of scripture. This specific Hebrew word which is Hebrew meaning to transfer into the possession of another. A good picture of that is in Numbers 27:8 where the daughters of Zelophehad had wanted to know about their inheritance. And they set it up so that the inheritance of their fathers would pass unto them. It says there the inheritance would pass unto these daughters of Zelophehad. That same word passed there. In other words, inheritance would be transferred into the property or possession of another.

The same word, the Hebrew word is used in Exodus 13:12 where we read that the people of Israel were to set apart unto the Lord the firstborn of cattle and beasts and men. That word set apart is the same Hebrew word and again has this connotation of transferring into the ultimate possession of somebody else in this case God and positively.

And so the word here when we read that the people of Israel are not to pass through the fire their children to Molech the implications of that are to transfer over to him by way of possession. Now certainly if you burn your child up that would be a complete transfer as it were to that God. But that isn’t the only thing that could effect that transfer in the case of the firstborn of the sons of Israel for instance they were not burned you remember they were by substitution the Levites and God used them for a special purpose they were consecrated or dedicated unto him as it were now in the parallel portion of the law Leviticus 20:2 it simply says that if any of you give any of your seed unto Molech he shall surely be put to death the there is simply the Hebrew word to give to Molech.

And again, you have this idea of transferring a possession or ultimate control over this particular thing you’re giving or passing through to another entity which is Molech. And so the prohibition in the law itself is much broader than the idea of merely setting something on fire. Now, that’s a subset, as we said, of passing something over way of possession, but it does not include all that’s involved.

Rabbinic commentaries on these verses and on Molech worship in general are absolutely unanimous in rejecting the idea that Molech worship always meant immolation or burning up by fire. Rabbinic commentary said instead that what we had here was fibrillation. Now my wife has also other people giving me a bad time by using big words. Fibrillation certainly is a big word and in fact it’s not even in most dictionaries anymore but I chose to put it in the outline as point B.

Fibrillation of children. Fibrillation simply means to cause something to be consecrated by burning through smoke or some sort of heat process, something like that. February is of course based upon that same word. Febrile conditions or febrile illnesses are probably common to some of the nurses we have here having to do with temperature or fever. February was the month of consecration. That’s where that term February came from.

Consecration of people to whatever pagan deity or to God himself. And so Fibrillation of children was a passage through the rabbis thought between two pillars of fire or two smoking things. The children will be taken through the midst of those things and through the smoke and through going through the midst in between these two fires be consecrated or fibrillated to the god Molech. And so there was the idea of consecration not simply the idea of immolation.

Keil by the way quote that and seemed to affirm that probably was the case. Calvin himself his editor notwithstanding by the way who says he must be wrong here. Calvin commenting on Jeremiah The passage of Jeremiah dealing with Molech worship says the same thing that although occasionally they would actually go so far as to burn their children. What’s really prohibited here is the giving of children in any way sense or any way or sense or shape over to the god Molech for his purposes to transfer ownership.

And that generally that was more often the case. The children will not be burned but will be consecrated to Molech. Another Dutch commentator says that The only thing that’s really clear from the passages in Leviticus is that the seed became the property then of and were devoted to the service of Molech. Okay, that’s the essential meaning of giving or passing something through to this God became the property of for his service.

And sometimes that might mean the actual immolation of the child. More often than not, it did not mean that. The Encyclopedia of Judaica on these passages says that Molech worship was basically the transfer of Jewish children then to paganism. Okay. Now remember that it says any of that I seen here and it did not mean that every child would necessarily be passed through these fires. A child would represent the household or the clan or the tribe and again with the other sacrificial systems that we see both in the valid ones and invalid ones.

The part stands for the whole and so that all the children of the people offering up their this particular child would be seen in this one sacrifice of this child for the purposes of Molech and his worship.

We’ll talk more about the idea of immolation or fibrillation in a little bit when we talk about another passage of the implications of the seed. But for now, I’m just asserting that the passage itself gives a broader classification than simply the immolation and that is the consecration of children to the purposes of Molech.

Now let’s move on to the third point which is the passage of the seed to Molech the seed itself. That is the specific word used in these case laws here in Leviticus. It doesn’t say your children. It says thy seed. And I think God is very specific here as he was specific in the sense of passing or giving over to Molech. He specifically uses the word seed instead of children. Why is that?

Well, the first point we want to make about these children of the seed is that it’s God’s children in seed. After all, we don’t believe that the children belong to the state or to Molech. We don’t believe the children belong to the parents. All believe the children born to God. And that’s based upon the scriptures in Ezekiel 16:20 specifically. It says that the people of Israel had taken thy sons and thy daughters whom thou hast born unto me, God says, and these thou hast sacrificed. So it’s bad enough if you had them when they were yours and you did this terrible thing with them.

But in point of fact, these children you bore were unto me, my seed. God says, my children, and you’ve taken and sacrificed to an idol. In Malachi 2:15, we’ve talked about this verse often in this church, that God, it says there made the two one in terms of marriage. For what purpose? That he that God might seek a godly seed. And so, the propagation of the race is important in terms of God’s purposes. And of course, ultimately, what’s talked about here in terms of a godly seed is the seed of the woman that would come forth finally in time in Jesus Christ to deliver all of the seed of Adam as it were from the curses of God due to those people that reject God in his worship.

The seed ultimately pointed to Jesus Christ, God, man, and history. But in light of that, then the seed was specifically said to refer to God’s children owned by him to be used for his purposes. Remember that Abraham the father of the covenant line as it were here was chosen by God because God knew that he would command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord. Those were the conditions of the covenant that was given to Abraham that he might keep his children pure to the way of God.

And of course, Abraham was the first one tested as it were with the dedication or consecration of the son as it were by fire. Remember that God told Abraham to take Isaac up and to give him as a sacrifice to God. But God of course provided a substitute for him. But the point was that God was doing two things there. One, he was putting through the coming seed, Jesus Christ, who would be the covenant mediator.

But he was also claiming as his own the covenant seed of man, all of man’s offspring. as it were, God’s holy possession to be used for his purposes. And if God sends some of our children off to war, for instance, and they die, they’re doing that because of God’s purposes and for his glory and our God has the right to command his creatures in whatever way he sees fit for his glory. And we know from the scriptures that if we’re called according to God, that will also be for our benefit and for our well-being in God’s sight.

And so the seed refers first of all to God’s children owned by him. David’s children in the in the commentary in the book of Revelation says that the basic war of history is between the seed of the woman and the seed of Satan. And Satan, and this is a kind of a large theme you could think of yourself this rest this afternoon perhaps, but throughout the history of man, Satan is always seeking to destroy the seed of the woman.

And certainly the giving over of God’s seed as it were to Satan or a subset of Satan, Molech, state worship, is certainly the giving away of the covenant seed for ungodly purposes and as it were cooperating with Satan in the destruction of seed. It’s God’s children and God’s covenant line.

Now, it’s interesting that this talking about the seed of God is also included in the context of sexual sins. In Leviticus 18 21 that we just read, it is preceded and followed by prohibitions on various degrees of consanguinity or various degrees of sexual intercourse with relatives or with neighbor’s wife or with a person of the same sex etc.

It’s in the context of sexual sin and that is important for us to recognize also the use of the word seed there. It’s thought by me that what’s being talked about here is not just the children that you already have but the children that are in your loins as it were. In other words, the rabbis interpreted this that to marry an unbeliever and specifically to marry an Ammonite was to be giving your seed to Molech or to king worship.

And so the prohibition against intermarriage between God’s people and the people that worship a different god is also seen as prohibited in this. Calvin comment on the duty of parents with their children says that if a person goes and gives his daughter to an unbeliever to a wicked man to a naughty pack as he says there is not one spark of honesty in him whose life is wholly out of order.

I make the silly sheep a prey and cast it into the wolf’s throat. And what cry is that? Is it not all as one as if I sacrifice my daughter unto Molech? Yes. For he draws her away from obedience unto God to put her into the hands of the devil and to turn her to all naughtiness.

The Encyclopedia of Judaica I quoted from earlier saying that Molech worship involved the transfer of children to paganism went on to say that transfer of children was accomplished either by delivering them directly to pagan priests or by procreation through intercourse with a pagan woman. The Book of Jubilees, powerful book, stated that intermarriage or rather the marrying off of one’s children to pagans with the sin of Molech. And so when I first read Calvin’s commentaries on giving your children to Molech worship, giving your children to pagans as Molech worship. I thought maybe he was just using a figure of speech and hadn’t thought through. He probably has thought through very well.

And the giving of our children over to ungodly pagans to marry is as it were Molech worship as well. Or to give our seed as it were to a pagan wife is also Molech worship.

Now the context of the seed also however is that of the future and this is found in chapter 20 verse 6. Verses 1-5 talk about the prohibition of Molech worship in verse 6 goes on to say in the immediate context “The soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits and after wizards to go whoring after them. I even set my face against that soul and cut him off from among his people.”

There’s a correlation here. We said last week that Calvin correlated the prohibitions against Molech worship with enchantments with wizardry with concerning with familiar spirits all as being forms of idolatry. It’s interesting that historically speaking, Manasseh, we read in 2 Chronicles 33:6 says specifically, he did cause his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the sun at Hinnom.

Also, he observed times and used enchantments and used witchcraft and dealt with the familiar spirit and wizards. Keil and Delitzsch in commenting on the relationship of Molech worship to these other practices says this. Moses groups together all the words which the language contained for the different modes of exploring the future and discovering the will of God for the purpose of forbidding every description of soothsaying and places the prohibition of Molech worship at the head to show the inward connection between soothsaying and idolatry.

Possibly because fibrillation, that big word again, where passing children through the fire on the wish of Molech was more intimately connected with soothsaying and magic than any other description of idolatry.

I might go on to say that idolatry doesn’t just seek to know the future. Soothsayers don’t just seek to know the future. They seek to know the future for a purpose, which is to change things, which is to control the future, as it were. Doesn’t do any good to know what’s going to happen in the future if you can’t do anything about it. Soothsayers and enchanters and people that consult with them want to know the future for the purpose of changing it and controlling the future.

Now think about that passing your seed over to Molech as a way of controlling the future. And consider now the deified state, the pagan state that we have in this land. What’s the hallmark of the civil magistrate in America today? It’s not tyranny really. It’s not that you want people to be hurt. It’s nothing like that. It’s control. The reason that the civil state fears tremendously. For instance, homeschoolers ultimately is not really over what’s going to be taught or not taught. Even if we taught them with the state curriculum, they still wouldn’t like that fact. Why?

Because it’s a loss of control or power over children which represent the future. Okay? The deified state wishes to have the children given to it for the purpose of controlling the future in the same way that a soothsayer or an enchanter will seek to control the future by consulting through various spiritual demons or whatnot.

It’s interesting that Shafarevich in his book The Socialist Phenomenon makes the point that the socialist phenomenon is always accompanied throughout its various transmutations in terms of history whether it’s a religious socialism of the early heresies of the first century church or the religious heresies of the radical anabaptist the Reformation through its current supposedly secular form consistent theme throughout the heresy of socialism is the control of children.

Now, until I did the study on Molech worship, I thought basically that’s kind of an interesting phenomenon. I didn’t understand the connection. The connection is the socialist phenomenon. The people that engage in radical socialism. And I suppose we could that’s another reminder to me to talk about Ronald Sider coming a week from tomorrow. People within the church that consult with socialism are basically engaging themselves in idolatry, following another god.

And the god that the socialists follow is the god of the state. God as it were walking on earth in the form of the state. The voice of the people is the voice of God. And the attempt of the socialist group then to control education is an attempt to control the future based upon this idolatrous relationship with the rejection of God as king and turning to the civil state as king. It’s control of the future.

And so the seed is important to see in relationship to God’s ownership and the covenant line and sexual sin. But it’s also important to see that relationship to the future.

Which takes us to our third point which is Molech himself and I’ll just go over this briefly since we talked about this particularly last week in somewhat more detail. Molech’s worship we said that the seed refers to children and also the future generation and also then the future of the covenant line itself. All those things are encompassed in the seed.

We see that passing the seed through to Molech involves transferring ultimate possession of those that seed that future and those children to the purposes of who we’re transferring it over to for the purposes of controlling the future. Not simply a destruction of what we’re giving to them, but a given to them for their purposes.

By the way, I might just mention here that a lot of pagan sources say that when people were transferred over to the worship of Molech, they would be given up to be temple prostitutes if they were girls, for instance. Again, you can see the connection there to the forms of using the children for its purposes, Molech’s purposes.

But any event then so the seed and transfer of the seed means giving over possession of Molech for his purposes. The transfer of covenant children to something else. Now what are we transferring this seed to? We’re transferring the seed to Molech. And as we said last week that means king plus shame. And it meant the worship of the deified state and its chief civil magistrate the king.

Don’t get hung up when I use the word king. That word Molech is actually used of various forms of civil authority. We’re not talking here just about the form of king worship itself in terms of a king of the crown. We’re talking about any head of a civil state that ascribes to himself instead of to God ultimate control and sovereignty over the people. That state then has become a Molech ruler a demonized state.

The word Molech has implicit in it that form of particular form of worship. Molech worship is a subset of Baalism. Baalism is claiming anything else to be Lord other than the true God of Israel, the true Yahweh himself, the covenant God of Israel. Molech worship is a subset of a specific word used to depict a specific way of idolatry which is turning your children over the future over to the state or the civil government itself. King worship in a word.

1 Samuel 12:12. I want to just go back to this for a minute. It’s such an important verse in understanding Molech worship even though the word Molech isn’t used here. Remember Molech was the God of the Ammonites. 1 Samuel 12:12. when the people saw Nahash, the king of the Ammonites specifically, they said, “No, but a king shall reign over us when the Lord your God was your king.” They had a king.

They didn’t want to change from king to from something else to king worship. They wanted to change from God as being their king to Nahash being their king or a person like Nahash. And Nahash was the head of the civil state that worshiped the king. And so the children of Israel fell into Molech worship. When they fell into the idolatry of the Ammonites is when they transferred their faith on an ultimate god beyond the civil authority, beyond the ecclesiastical authority, beyond the family authority, transcended God to an imminent God in the form of the state itself. That is Molech worship.

And that’s what the people of Israel were tempted to do in 1 Samuel 12 and eventually accomplished when Saul departed from the faith. And then Rehoboam also became another Molech. As I said before, the end of Molech worship, Saul’s head severed in front of Dagon. The end of Yahweh worship, Jehovah worship is Dagon’s head severed in front of the ark of the covenant depicting the presence of God with his people. There are two ways. Psalm one we just read earlier said there are two ways for man. The way of obedience, the way of disobedience, the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked. And the people of Israel would go after the way of the wicked by specifically resorting to the worship of the state. Molech worship represented the deified state competing with God for ultimate control of the people.

So I would say then that Molech worship passing of the seed through to Molech could be summarized in this way. It is the transfer of God’s covenant children, not Jewish children, God’s covenant children to not simply paganism but to statism. The transfer of God’s covenant children to statism for its purposes.

Now, I said statism, and I guess I should be very careful here to understand what I’m saying. I am not saying there is not a legitimate function of the civil government. There is. We’ve stressed time and time again here that Romans tells us specifically that until the civil magistrate causes us to disobey a command of God, we will obey him. We’re obey him. Clear and simple. If you don’t obey the civil magistrate because you don’t like the idea of civil government or because it’s not convenient for you or for any other reason other than what God in the scriptures has clearly commanded us to do which is to disobey him when obedience to him would cause us to disobey God. If you disobey the civil magistrate for any other reason and get into trouble this church isn’t going to help you because we believe that it is important to walk in obedience to the civil government.

That’s not what I’m talking about. Statism is not simply of having a state over us. Statism is the belief that civil state that particular Congress that governor that president that civil head representing all the civil state will produce salvation for the people status I don’t believe are ultimately diabolic people in the sense that they want to see blood running in the streets they don’t want that they want a perfectly ordered civilization like an anthill totally controlled by the civil state and they want that because they absolutely believe that is the way to have peace and prosperity on the earth Now they’ve turned aside the worship of God. They exchange the truth for a lie. They suppress the truth. They